Saturday, January 31, 2015

There is an old saying which, if memory serves, goes something like, "Arrrgghhhhhhhhh".

Here I am working on editing segments for tonight's radio show when it suddenly occurs to me (for about the 10th time in the last few days) that I never got last week's show posted here. Like a martini without olives, this just won't do. There are standards. (And I play them, ba-da-dum.)

Last week was on-air fundraising/pledge week at our little all volunteer Community Radio Station. Even though our operating budget doesn't come close to a commercial station's, it still takes about $15,000.00 a year to keep it going. Recent problems with our antenna site and internet delivery of our programs to our transmitter ended up costing us a good bit of fee-age as well as increasing our monthly costs by $100.00. This month our yearly insurance bill arrived. It went up 25%. I got our lawyer involved and we managed to negotiate a payment schedule at almost the last moment.

The plan for my show had been to feature a January 23rd, 1946 broadcast of Cab Calloway's Orchestra. As I did the research I discovered two things - the 23rd was a Wednesday, and I had an incomplete broadcast from that Monday from the same club with different performers. The Zanzibar wasn't a one night stand kind of place. Located in Times Square on the second floor of the Winter Garden Theatre, it was once a premiere nightspot featuring danceable black jazz bands, plus a floor show featuring scantily clad dancers. It allowed a mixed race clientele, unlike other toney spots like the Stork Club or the (by then closed) Cotton Club. Black patrons were, however, usually seated underneath the balcony overhangs.

So what was I to make of a mid-week one night booking at a popular club? Obviously, something was wrong. By the time I discovered this, I had already done the newspaper research and started publishing clippings from that week on the show's Facebook page. After a good bit of research I figured it out - the Cab Calloway show should have been dated 7-23-40 not 1-23-40. I did the honorable thing and let everyone know the situation. And, since it was pledge week, I offered to play the Cab Calloway show anyway if I reached a certain amount in pledges.

During January 1946 there was a used clothing drive to help war ravaged Europe. There were any number of strikes as people began to prepare for a post-war economy. Even the phone company was going on strike! The minimum wage had gone up a few months before to 40 cents an hour. Under the Labor laws the Roosevelt administration had passed was a requirement for time and a half over 40 hours - it was so good to get a little more for those last 10 hours most jobs required.

And here's last Saturday's show.

I hope anyone who listens enjoys this one - a return visit to 1946 after just two weeks was a little unexpected, so there are two segments that were repeats, sorry about that.